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Thursday, 22 October 2015

Jeremy Corbyn as Ramsay Macdonald

He does not look bad in white tie unlike John Major, who looked absurd - but then Mr Corbyn is from a good family. he doesn't look good but much better than John Major.

He doesn't look like Compo in white tie, at any rate. There is usually a resemblance, though Compo was much more benign.

But the Spectator says he caused offence by texting from his telephone over dinner - a breach of protocol.What is frightening is that there are people who actually welcome Mr Corbyn as leader and genuinely think he might be Prime Minister and think that would be a good thing. Robin Lustig, who until recently read the news on BBC Radio 4, thinks so. So does Canon Giles Fraser late of St Paul's and now of the Guardian. So do a lot of respected intellectuals. It is very dismaying that, unlike agreeing with Viktor Orban, there is no stigma attached to liking Corbyn.

Martin Amis at least does not. In an article in The Sunday Times, he called Mr Corbyn humourless.

Many journalists have remarked on this, usually in a tone of wry indulgence. In fact it is an extremely grave accusation, imputing as it does a want of elementary nous. To put it crassly, the humourless man is a joke - and a joke he will never get.

He is undereducated. Which is one way of putting it. His schooling dried up when he was 18, at which point he had two E-grade A-levels to his name; he started a course at North London Polytechnic, true, where he immersed himself in trade union studies, but dropped out after a year. And that was that....

...To my eyes, he doesn't have the eager aura of an autodidact. It is a fair guess that his briefcase, or his satchel, contains nothing but manifestos and position papers.

Mr. Blair looked at ease in white tie, but Mr Cameron looks wonderful in it, exactly as if he wore it every night, even when dining alone.

I remember reading the obituary of a bachelor duke who always wore white tie even when dining alone, which he usually did. One can't pretend that England is not in decline now that dukes introduce themselves by their Christian names.